Week #26 Oaxaca de nuevo
We are in Oaxaca de Juárez, the capital city of the State of Oaxaca. We had a pleasant surprise of seeing Elder Ranulfo Cervantes sitting on the stand when we arrived. We seem to be following each other around. Yes, there´s an element of nostalgia for our shared past in Cholula but oh what joy it gives me to see the man he is becoming and how he is helping others. His dad would be so pleased. It was a delight to learn from him about practical applications of loving, sharing, and inviting all to come unto Christ.
Today (Sunday) during our priesthood quorum class, we studied an October General Conference address from Ian S. Arden entitled, "Love Thy Neighbour". My take aways were the reality of what the Saviour of the World did, “Have ye any that are lame, or blind, or halt, … or that are deaf, or that are afflicted in any manner? Bring them hither and I will heal them, for I have compassion upon you." “… And he did heal them every one” (3 Nephi 17:7, 9) and, Elder Arden´s charge to each of us, "Despite our every effort, you and I won’t heal everyone, but each of us can be the one who can make a difference for good in the life of someone."
We live in a very affluent neighborhood. This past week on the way to the office building where I serve, my eyes were drawn to an older woman leaning against the wall of a building on a service road that ran parallel to the sidewalk that I was walking on. She was sobbing uncontrollably. I carefully approached her and asked her why she was crying. Through her tears she shared the cutting words with which she had been cast out onto the street some time ago over and over again, motioning to a small number of shopping bags that now carried all of her worldly belongings. However, the pain of that wound wasn´t why she was crying. She said the cause of her grief was she had just learned that the only person, an aunt, that had ever shown kindness to her in her family had died. Adding to her sorrow was that all she had was the 20 peso bill she clutched in her hand which was not enough to buy flowers to put on her grave. Her grief was such that she hardly noticed me. The woman she mourned had had such a positive impact in this lady´s life. I tried to comfort her with the knowledge that even if others treat her unkindly, God will never abandon her and asked if I could give her a hug, which she accepted and which seemed to help - I don´t usually carry cash with me on my walk to and from work but that morning I felt I needed to put some in my pocket and I did. Perhaps buying food would have been a wiser purchase but her emotional need was flowers to place on a grave as a tribute to someone else that did good to allow her to again look up.
While I was writing this blog and thinking about how I could a difference for good in other´s lives, I received a What´s App call from a fellow that I had given my off-the-shelf Walmart reading glasses to at church somewhere in my travels in Mexico over the past couple of decades. His wife had somehow tracked down my number, no small feat. I didn't remember his name, but I remember how he made me feel. He was an older fellow that warmly greeted me at the door of the church, took my outstretched hand in both of his and then sat with me during the meetings. That he wasn't able to see became apparent when he was asked to read a scripture during the Sunday School lesson - like me his arms weren´t long enough for him to see letters on a printed page clearly. I lent him my reading glasses and then gave them to him as gift - I try to emulate his example of being welcoming, not only at church but always. I have to do a better job of recording and remembering names.
Our work week mostly focused on preparations for two protocolario events here in Oaxaca. These events mark implementations milestones in humanitarian aid projects. We took the 7-hour bus trip to get here in early December to participate in a protocolario event with BAMX a non-government organization that runs a network of food banks. I could lose myself in the scenery of another bus trip, but this time we flew. When we arrived, there was a long line up for official taxis and not very many empty taxis arriving. Instead of waiting for an hour or more, we walked out of the terminal and dragged our luggage to the street where we found a handful of taxi´s waiting with no lineup at about half the cost. The driver even happily hefted our luggage into his cab, including 55lbs of tools for the wheelchair training this coming week.
I was hoping to use my church-issued bank card to pay for the expenses for this trip as it took until Friday of this past week to be reimbursed for the project expenses we incurred for our December trip. Being a global church, I see many of the same administrative process and decision-making challenges as I experienced working for the Canadian federal government. Yes, I am in my element. What they said held up the repayment was the reimbursement of cash expenses in Canadian dollars.
I used my church bank card to take out a cash advance so that all of the cash transactions would be internal. For the first time in my life, I will be 64, I didn't take my card out of the ATM - I am not sure how it happened, I just grabbed the cash and the receipt I was focused on. I noticed I was missing the card about 15 minutes later when I got back to our suite. I tried to call the bank. It was no surprise that they didn´t answer as the young gal at the front desk was too engrossed in her phone to even look up to return my "Buenos días" greeting when I arrived or my, "Que tenga un buen día" farewell. I needed to make the withdrawal from the bank that issued the card, it was a very sleepy and hidden place and there was a very good chance that no one had used the ATM after I did. When I returned to the bank the same gal told me that the machine likely swallowed the card - so can you go get it for me? No, you have to report it lost and have a new one issued...which I did by telephone in the UBER on the way to the airport. A new card will arrive at our suite in about 2 weeks' time. By then my 3000 pesos (CAN$200) cash advance will have grown considerably - just taking out the advance incurred a 13% surcharge. Not sure how I go about returning the portion of the cash advance I didn't use before I get the new card but I will give it try on Friday at the bank when we are back in Tecamachalco.
In order to document expenditures for reimbursement, I need to have an official receipt that includes a whole lot of data that the clerk at the store has to manually enter - sometimes they ask you to send the information to a third party by WhatsApp to generate the receipt. The requirements are national, not just for the church, and in my view the process must have been created by accountants, not people that actually make purchases or travel. It's self-service to the extreme. Uber doesn´t operate here and taxis only take cash - not sure how that´s going to work as far as reimbursement either but I love to learn.
Much to our delight the Oaxaca temple (and the chapel we went to this morning are just down the street. We walked there yesterday morning to do vicarious work for our ancestors to give them the opportunity to experience the same joy we have.
To get there we have to cross 8 lanes of Oaxaca traffic. The light only lasts long enough to get halfway across. The leaves on the tree growing on the median the middle remind me of an explanation that still makes me chuckle of how unguided management often works in a corporate world - this is nowhere I would want to work again. The birds here spend the day foraging and then gather in the evening to chit chat and defecate...
The protocolario event on Friday marked deliver of raw materials (piping, cement, aggregate, chain link fencing) and tools donated by the Church to construct rainwater capture structures as part of a watershed management plan for a comunidad agraria. The equipment in the picture below is for members´ use to fight forest fires - yes, by hand just like in Alberta where we are from. They are planting trees to anchor the soil down and increase water infiltration while cool its surface to reduce evaporation.
One of the members of the comunidad explained a key difference between this kind of social organization versus ejidos. Ejidos were created by the government of Mexico in response to political pressure to seize and redistribute land to peasants, whereas comunidades predate this period in Mexico's history but were recognized as legal entities without imposing a government mandated administrative structure. My original question to him was how difficult it was to get the community to work cooperatively and collaboratively together to agree on a plan to manage this watershed as haven´t seen many examples of this approach before. The fellow said that the basis of their social organization has always been cooperation and collaboration and as a result, not only were they able to agree on a plan, volunteers to carry it out are readily available. The project is a first in this watershed and one of its objectives is to serve as model for 5 other neighboring comunidades to follow, thus covering the entire watershed to secure water for themselves but also for the city below. They expressed their frustration in attempting to work with governments on this project whose focus presently is digging more wells in the city below to attempt to address water shortages instead of preserving and increasing the amount of water available. We will return at a later date when they is more than construction materials to see.
Something that caught my eye in the newly renovated lobby on one of the three floors occupied by the church is a closet with equipped with firefighting equipment, including boots, jackets and helmets. My assumption is that someone among us has been trained to fight fires and not just in first aid.
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